It's hereditary.

And I'm pretty sure my son has it.  One second, he is the sweetest, most loving kid, and the next he is a completely different person.  I swear even his appearance changes.  His normally lovely brown eyes seem to turn completely black.  Everything you say is answered, with "No."  Sometimes, I wonder if a priest may be needed more than a psychologist.  I'm not joking.  Sadly.

Fortunately, they have tried him on new medications, Strattera and Tenex, that is working wonders for him.  He is like a complexly different person.  He is growing more responsible and blossoming before our eyes.  It's a beautiful thing.

In other news, things with my on again off again husband are deteriorating rapidly.  He cannot talk to me even one without throwing out insults, barbs and criticism.  The stalking  I just cannot handle it too  much longer.  It is making the depression so much worse.  I hate it.  It is making me hate him.

The Plateau

Today, I am slightly down but definitely not in the abyss.  I am still lonely, but I am trying to combat that by getting out and doing things.  Having lost my confidante is still tearing me up inside, but the pain is subsiding to a constant, dull ache. I don't know how I will ever trust anybody with my whole self again.  That was a problem anyway.  I just don't share about myself much.

I have had some good news.  I story that I wrote for an anthology was accepted for publication and I signed my first contract as an author today.  I am no longer just a stay at home mom, but a writer as well.  However, now my writing isn't giving me with joy it used to and I think it is because the person that I used to write with, my mentor, my cheerleader has been excised from my life due to the aforementioned betrayal.  They had become a large part of my life and my world is slightly colorless and flat without them.

How do you overcome betrayal?

How do you overcome the betrayal of the one person that you trusted the most in the entire world?  The only person that you have really had for years.  Because I am at a loss as to where to start.  How do you learn to trust them again?  How do you learn to trust anyone again?

More importantly, how do you keep yourself out of the abyss while you attempt to figure this out?

Because when you feel like you have nobody in the world to talk to, to confide in, to vent with, the world feels cold and lonely.  And maybe like a place where there is no place for you.

Well, I still don't know how many...

Will actually kill you, but I do have a general idea of how many will get you a charcoal slushee and and a 48 hour involuntary admit to a hospital, compliments of your oldest child.  In reality, I don't really know the actual number because I wasn't counting as I threw them in my mouth and chased them down the Jack Daniels Tennessee Honey whiskey.

How all this came to be is a long, twisted tale of hope, love, anger, pain and a complete betrayal of two people that I loved and thought I could trust.  Throw in a lot of alcohol and a dash of domestic violence and you've got your yourself a perfect recipe for self-destruction.  Or at least it would appear that way.

I am better now.  I wouldn't have done it had I not been so drunk and I don't have any plans to retry.  Not too say that I don't have fleeting wishes that I hadn't made that call that I don't remember to my oldest child and I had been left alone to go to sleep forever, because I do.  Whenever I recall the betrayal of the one, single person that I trusted most on this earth, and how it set this whole mess, which will reverberate throughout my world for the rest of my life, in motion, I do.  When I am lonely and I recall the new but exciting friendships are lost to me forever due to circumstances that occurred because of this betrayal, I do.

None of it can be undone.  Nothing can be changed.  The damage to my heart is permanent, I think.

The "how many" game.

I didn't take the clonazapam, obviously.  Instead, I've been flirting with the idea of how many pills can I take and still wake up in the morning.  That way, if I don't wake up, it is an ACCIDENTAL overdose and not suicide.  At least, in my deluded mind, that makes since, and my children will not think that I abandoned them.  That is the most important thing.  Last night, it was two Ambien,  six clonazapam and two Lithium.  I ate half a bag of cookies and had a conversation that I don't really remember with my oldest daughter who is away at college, but I'm still here.

My husband no longer speaks to me.  He has stopped paying the household bills.  The water will be shut off on the 28th if I can't come up with $148.  It looks like it hasn't been paid in about three months.  I don't know who will take care of my children when I am gone.  Besides all his lip service about what a horrible mother I am, none of them like to be around him.  We are opposite side of the same coin with me being to lenient and coddling and him being to strict and with a complete and total ignorance of how to affectionate on any level.  One would think that  would even us out and make us the perfect couple, but it doesn't.  It puts us at constant odds with one another.

I'm seeing my therapist tomorrow.  I'm debating printing out this blog and showing it to her, but I'm afraid she will put me away and I'm not sure that I want anybody this far into my head.  I'm pretty sure that nobody actually reads here, so it feels like a safe place.

How many words are there for down?

Because I am getting sick of writing about being down.  So sick of it that I have considered discontinuing my Lithium so that I can have an up cycle where I feel happy and hopeful.

The down cycle continues and is intensifying.  I am convinced that I am alone.  I know this emphatically.  And the loneliness and isolation that come with that knowledge are overwhelming.  I really have no family to speak of: my parents are long deceased, my siblings far away and being so much older than I, seemingly unconcerned with the little sister that they did not grow up with.  I, of course, have my children, whom I love dearly, but they are not peers in which I can confide and unburden myself from the dark thoughts in my head.  They remain prisoners there because I have nowhere to release them and they are making my head ache to the point of tears.

It is a horrible feeling to know that nobody in whole world really, really loves you.  I'm looking at approximately 100 clonazapam and I can't think of a good reason not to take them all.

Up and down, up and down

It is the cycling that will drive you mad.  The rapid change in mood and temperament and, well, everything.  Yesterday was a wonderful day; my oldest sons birthday.  We had a wonderful day together and he said it was the best birthday he had ever had.  Then we came home and had a cookie cake and the whole family watched a movie.  I fell asleep contented, if not a little crowded, with four kids and a dog in my bed.

Today, I overslept and missed Mass, so the guilt started in immediately.  Then, almost as if he could sense my weakness, my husband called.  Did I go to Mass, he wanted to know.  When I told him I missed it, he said that he could have told me I wasn't going to go when he talked to me last night.  Then  the verbal abuse started except this time, I told him I didn't have to listen to his bullshit and I hung up the phone.  He switched to texting me and it got really ugly on both our parts.  I literally turned off his personal cell phone and blocked his work cell number so that he couldn't reach me.

Every thing has gone wrong and sent me into a paroxysm of tears.  A package of tortillas went missing, leaving me 8 short for dinner.  Couldn't find the colander....just normal things, normally, but it feels like the end of the world when you are caught in the throes of depression.  There is no joy, no happiness, but worst of all, there is no hope.

I don't want to live like this.